


Beauty Queen Sister

by Missy



Category: The Simpsons
Genre: Episode Related, Future Fic, Gen, Motherhood, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 12:22:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/913163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maggie returns to Springfield.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beauty Queen Sister

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Trope Bingo, prompt: Future Fic. This is set within the version of the future established within the episode "Holidays of Future Past."

Her flight is twenty minutes late, but that is nothing new. Maggie’s still surprised Springfield Airport hasn’t been reduced to one runway and a churro salesman at this point. But the cracked runway and sun-bleached entrance still spoke of home to her - it stirrs up her blood, reminding Maggie of half-remembered trips to Japan, Australia, Africa, and England – and also of ones taken later in her youth to Canada and Iceland. She’d visited all of those places twice over as an adult – packed arenas and sold an untold number of songs in both places. There, she’s a star who needs to hide her face to buy a pair of shoes; here she’s just Maggie, Bart and Lisa’s baby sister.

The cab ride home is longer than it used to be – she’s got a crying baby to calm, and bouncing her against her collarbone doesn’t seem to be cutting it. She has four diamond-coated pacifiers at the ready, and a thousand dollars more in fancy baby stuff back home at her squillion dollar palace by the Majorcan ocean (most of them Herb Powell created – there was something to be said for familial synergy), but she’s just headed home to Homer and Marge’s – that means roughing it while cringing over her father’s amiable roughness and her mother’s overinvolved hyper-sensitivity.

Lisa’s been through this already: she’ll inform Maggie that it’s incredibly important to bond with your child in the most emotionally enriching, feminist-leaning and earth-friendly way. Then again, Lisa believes in using biodegradable soy-enriched diapers and formula made from yak’s milk, and Maggie didn’t have time for that.

Bart doesn’t have any advice, of course - “don’t hold it upside down,” he will tell her, sitting on the sofa and sipping his beer while his kids run wild. She remembers what it was like for him when he brought home his oldest son, white-knuckled, holding onto the edge of his son’s hip and staring at him with wide, confused eyes. It is hard to remember that Bart isn’t just the coolest guy in the neighborhood; he has fears and worries about his kids, not that he’s willing to share them with his baby sister.

Maggie watches her daughter’s face screw up again in anger and sighs. They wiz past Springfield Elementary and Maggie remembers perching herself atop the monkey bar and singing out the latest song she’d written at the very top of her lungs. She remembers what it feels like to skate down theses streets on hand-me-down roller blades, popping chewing gum, with some Larry Davis Experience blasting in her ears. She remembers the styrofoam taste of Krustyburgers, and how much she craved them during her pregnancy – and how much she wants one now.

The miles feel like inches now, the distance shortening. The baby turns and fusses, dreaming of something amorphous, a half-forgotten fear unique to her young mind. Her memories will be different from Maggie’s.

But Maggie would not trade her new world for this old one: her memories for a life of privilege. It’s swell to have money, but sometimes the sweetest memories are the ones made for free.

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction uses characters from **The Simpsons** , all of whom are the property of the **Fox Television**. No money was gained from the writing of this fanfiction and all are used under the strictures of of the Berne Convention.


End file.
